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    The Afghan
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    The Afghan
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    The Afghan
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Afghan

    Written by Frederick Forsyth

    Narrated by Robert Powell

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When British and American intelligence discover an al Qaeda operation in the works, they enlist undercover imposter Colonel Mike Martin to pass himself off as Taliban commander Izmat Khan. But nothing prepares Martin for the dark and shifting world into which he is about to enter-or the terrible things he will find there.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 22, 2006
    ISBN9781429586429
    Unavailable
    The Afghan
    Author

    Frederick Forsyth

    Frederick Forsyth (b. 1938) is an English author of thrillers. Born in Kent, he joined the Royal Air Force in 1956, becoming one of the youngest pilots to ever fly in Her Majesty’s service. After two years in the RAF, he began working as a journalist. He later turned his journalism skills to writing fiction, and his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (1970), was a great success. Forsyth continued to use real figures and criminal organizations as inspiration, writing popular books like The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974). His most recent novel is The Cobra (2010).  

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    Reviews for The Afghan

    3.5/5

    355 ratings20 reviews

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    • 1/5
      DNF. Too weird.
    • 3/5
      I have not read a Forsyth book for many years and I picked this up with some trepidation. The stars are definitely for plot and background details, although the former gets a bit over coincidental towards the end. For writing style and characterisation one star would be generous!
      But the sum of the parts kept me reading it and as ever, the possibilities posed by Forsyth seemed all too plausible and worrying,
    • 4/5
      As the title suggests the story is about a terrorist attack on the leaders of the west. Well written, as usual with Forsyth's novels, and well researched. Forsyth provides a good overview about how we came to be in the mess we are in with the Taliban, ISIS and Pakistan. The only negative about it is that he spends more time on the historical developments in the Middle East than the characters of the book.
    • 3/5
      Good read. Fast paced action. Pleasant style.
    • 4/5
      This book can be seen as a sequel to [The Fist of God]. The hero of that work, Mike Martin, was too good not to have another excursion. The world has moved on past the 7/7 London tube bombings and Martin has retired to solitary roof repairs in Hampshire when some mobile phone tapping exposes the threat of an Al-Qaeda 'spectacular' the nature of which can only be discovered by infiltrating the Al-Qaeda high command. Martin is the only man for the job. The first two-fifths of the book, while starting to develop the terror plot mostly deals with Martin's background from his childhood in Baghdad through his long service with the SAS in the Falklands, Afghanistan (during the Russian occupation), Northern Ireland, Kuwait and Baghdad in the First Gulf War, the Balkans and Sierra Leone before returning to Afghanistan again in the aftermath of 9/11. This is a long story of which much would be known by anyone familiar with [The Fist of God]. The reader is also introduced to the Afghan of the title, a young Pashtun named Izmat Khan, influenced by time in Pakistani madrassahs, but initially only interested in the well-being of his country. In one of the several coincidences in the book, he meets Mike Martin who save his life when wounded by a Russian bullet. In the Taliban field hospital both Khan and Martin meet Osama bin Laden. Khan is turned into a jihadist after the complete destruction of his home, family and neighbours by a missile strike and becomes involved in the so-called Battle of Qala-i-Jangi in which his life is again saved by Martin. Forsyth gives us a pretty full and partly factual account of this fighting: an interesting small detail is that, while Wikipedia credits four US troops with a rescue of a TV crew and a CIA agent, Forsyth give the job to four SBS men. Captured, Khan is transferred to Guantanamo Bay and the stage is set for his place in the story as the legend for Martin's character when he infiltrates Al-Qaeda.The next two-fifths deal with the operation to allow Martin to assume his false identity and contact Al-Qaeda followed by considerable detail about the preparations for the act of terror. We are treated to a lot of typical Forsythian information about terrorist recruitment and organisation, smuggling across the Straits of Hormuz, and international shipping. He does this well, as usual, and never fails to keep the story moving along. After a somewhat irrelevant side track to deal with the loose end that Izmat Khan has become the last 50 pages or so deal with the denouement of the terror plot. After the very detailed preamble the finale seemed a bit rushed, but that is Forsyth's style.The tradition of almost superhuman and nearly infallible foes is long and honourable from Moriarty through Fu Man Chu and Carl Peterson to Smersh and SPECTRE. Here Forsyth is giving that role to radical Islam. He succeeded in scaring me by his description of the brainwashing of young men in the madrassahs, by the plausible and effective financial management of terrorism and, most of all, by his emphasis on the world-wide scope of the threat to the West. A message that I take away is that we shouldn't get too exercised about phone-tapping and that there is a place for suspension of human rights. I don't like to feel that way but Forsyth is persuasive. I am prompted to seek out rather more objective modern middle Eastern history.A well-crafted and informative book.
    • 4/5
      Excellent example of how to keep the story moving, fast, and build tension. Also tremendous amount of info (well researched) about how wars work these days, and how subtly and quickly things can shift. I have not read anything by Frederick Forsyth prior to this book and will now definitely look for more -- probably some of his older classics such as The Odessa File.
    • 3/5
      Vintage Forsyth – very long build-up with lots of irrelevant information on weapons (not used), military procedures (not followed), military hierarchies (not operationalised), and very little in terms of suspense and actual action. This is also how I remember ‘the day of the Jackal’, one of the biggest reading disappointments in my life probably. All this stuff about a planned assassination, and in the end a no show. In this case it is all about a British undercover agent infiltrating Al Qaida, trying to find out about a major operation (al Ishra) against the West. In the end he finds out what it is all about and even manages to self-lessly sabotaging it at the cost of his own life. What remains is an innocuous burial and inscription on some wall at some barracks. Forsyth builds his story around an innocent remark by a British professor of the Koran, who thought perhaps his retired MI5/SIS brother might be capable of infiltrating the AQ ranks to find out about an impending operation. They share a background growing up in Iraq, speaking Arabic, and a smattering of Pashto (NW Pakistan). His ‘legend’ is an Afghan prisoner in Gitmo, whom he personally knew from an earlier MI6 assignment in Afghanistan. Part of the story concerns his removal from Gitmo and subsequent spectacular (stage-managed) escape in Afghanistan. The real legend is put up in a remote snowed-in cabin near the Canadian border, from whence he escapes at some stage, resulting in the most dynamic part of the thriller (a desperate hunt in the snow). My final judgement is that the story could have been told in a much more exciting manner. Taking a leaf from the book of le Carre, why not start with the attack at full sea, or the chase for the escaped legend? And then start working your way back? Or alternatively use the voice and I person of the desperate agent, allowing the reader to identify with his supposed heroics and sense of desperation? But no, a linear narrative with lots of superfluous detail and no real suspense, except for the occasional flicker…
    • 2/5
      The first two thirds were good: interesting and fast-paced. The ending became awkward and contrived but, overall, it was a decent read.
    • 2/5
      The ability to describe – convincingly and in detail – how skilled and knowledgeable people do things has always been Frederick Forsyth’s particular literary talent. The scene in Day of the Jackal where the assassin methodically adjusts the sights on his newly acquired, custom-made rifle involves one deliberately underdeveloped character and no suspense at all. Nonetheless, it’s riveting (and, even after decades, memorable) because Forsyth takes his time and describes the process step by methodical step . . . taking the reader inside a secret world that would otherwise be closed to them. The trick works so well that, in The Dogs of War, an extended episode involving the smuggling of small arms across the French border is as gripping as the use of them, in the book’s climax, to stage a coup in a small African country.The Afghan has moments like that – you learn a great deal about the shipping business; about how cargoes are bought, sold, and documented; and about the tactics of modern-day pirates – and they’re as interesting as ever. Unfortunately, the story wrapped around them is far less interesting than Forsyth’s best work.The plot (like all Forsyth’s plots) is easily summarized: A retired British special-forces officer with an uncanny ability to pass as an Afghan is infiltrated into an Islamic terrorist network, posing as a recently “released” high-ranking prisoner, in a desperate attempt to disrupt an impending attack whose timing and target remain unknown. It moves (again, like all his plots) with reasonable speed, but its movements are far from graceful. The pacing is awkward, the clichés abundant (the veteran operative lured out of quiet retirement for One Last Job, the hero and villain who share An Undisclosed Bond, the complicated ritual the hero must perform Exactly Right or be revealed), and the ending oddly unsatisfying. The need to keep the exact nature of the attack a secret from the reader limits Forsyth’s opportunity to craft his trademark “how they do it” scenes, and one mid-book plot development depends on not one but two coincidences that beggar belief.The end result of all this is a book that carries you along and keeps you entertained, but never for a moment convinces you that any of it is real. It’s a routine, sometimes clunky thriller only occasionally enlivened by Forsyth’s gift for describing complex processes – not, as in his earlier work, an immersive experience that leaves you with a suspicion that “this might have happened.”
    • 4/5
      Pacy thriller, well researched and full of obscure details, which helps you overlook some flaws.
    • 2/5
      This is just the kind of book you would expect from Frederick Forsyth - thoroughly researched, good build up of character personalities, engaging style, excellent writing style which makes the book totally un-put-downable!However it is on his research that I would like to make a point or two, though probably minor indiscrepancies. India has been mentioned thrice in the book and twice in the context of Kerala, the other being that the book’s protagonist had an Indian grandmother.He mentions Kerala in India as being a hotbed of Islamic terrorists, once having being a hotbed for communism.Well the communism part is right- but I hope he knows that communism came to Kerala through an election, not as a revolution or a coup in other parts of the world - so it had to be a sort of popular communism and not the darker meaning his words intone.Kerala being a hotbed of islamic terrorism is a new idea to me. Kerala has never witnessed a terrorist act. People generally respect the law, are highly educated and ever vigilant. It’s commmon for complete strangers while travelling, to ask each other their destination, their native town, about their close family, even their married status, and most people reach out to each other in times of distress. The other time he mentions a couple of Indians from Kerala as being part of a pirate gang on the high seas. Likely.The third instance he mentions Keralites is of them being part of a crew of a ship hijacked by terrorists. Here there is a mention of them being "good Christians" and "trusted". Well religion is never an issue in Kerala and people of every caste and creed enthusiastically celebrate each others festivals and intermingle amongst themselves as family. If Forsyth wants to hint that Christians anywhere in the world can be trusted, they be Indians or whatever, then he is wrong. Terrorism and religion cannot be interlinked. Especially in the context of Kerala.These may be minor flaws but I wanted to keep the record straight through this forum, though of course the book was fiction.I would say his book is good except for the feeling one gets that he is being partial to his own culture as compared to other cultures. Well todays reader is cosmopolitan and his book would be read by almost anybody in any part of the world.His book is a classic I agree, but reading trends are changing and the audience is a global one. Forsyth cannot belittle a country or a culture with prejudiced notions, marginalizing some of his readers that way.English books are no longer for the English, by the English and of the English!
    • 3/5
      This clever thriller gives a lot of background information on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan
    • 1/5
      Freddie living off his rep I'm afraid. It is a dismal exercise in writing though very well researched but it does this great master no credit at all.
    • 4/5
      Read as ebook via Overdrive from local library
    • 4/5
      Typically solid, well written Freddie Forsyth. Ticks all the usual Forsythe boxes.
    • 4/5
      It's a Vince-Flynn-like adventure, maybe not as much adventure, but with some good history.
    • 4/5
      I found this an enjoyable page turner:implausible in parts, but not to the point of being irritating, and well contrived on the whole. I thought the fake idenitity was well thought out, and the background convincing and informative. a good read!
    • 4/5
      A rattling good yarn - but - I expected nothing else. I had a headache this morning because it kept me up late last night in order to finish it.
    • 2/5
      It is rather unfortunate that this book is the first one in my list. Although I have been a Forsyth fan for a long, long time now, this book was a huge disappointment for me. It was crammed with useless information as opposed to gainful insights into the Afghanistan scenario. If it is compared to its predecessor [The Fist of God] it comes out not just a tad short on quality, but also lacking in suspense. Mike Martin comes across as the brilliant SAS guy again. But somewhere, the thrill of The Fist... was missing
    • 3/5
      Not one of his best.This has the feel of soemthing rushed out a bit in response to world wide events of the last few years. US and UK intelligence agencies co-incidently (this plot device features alot) learn of a codenamed AlQaeda forthcoming attack, but no details, their only lead jumped out of a window without giving away any details. What they need to do is something never before achieved - instigate someone into the very highest ranks of AQ, who can learn the details and get warning out. That someone turns out to be an aging Para captain Mike Martin, who can, through more co-incidences replace one of the freed prisoners from Gitanamo Bay.The prose is Forsyth's usual well detailed descriptions focusing on the how rather than the motivations of the people. Apart from the unnecessary engine fall, and resultant snowbound chase, the story hangs together well, although some of the details of the latest in american hardware are dull. The over-riding conclusion remains valid however - just how difficult it is to penetrate determined fundamentalist groups.